Griffith G. Smith

Pre and post cropping done with Adobe Lightroom; edits done with Photoshop CS5. The background on the original was distracting. I made a copy layer, plus other adjustment layers that remapped some of the colors, then flattened that layer group. Then I made a mask around the subject and replaced the subject with black on the copy layer and flattened it again. The next step was to blur that layer, then overlay it with a sharp layer of just the subject. The result avoided most artifacts of blurring the background. Additional layers then cleaned up a few rough edges.